MOSCOW, Aug 25, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Russia on Monday detained a regional official suspected of embezzling funds earmarked to build border fortifications, the latest case in a corruption clampdown linked to military setbacks in the Ukraine offensive.

After Ukraine stormed into the Kursk border region last year, capturing and holding swathes of territory for months, the Kremlin launched a crackdown on regional officials alleged to have siphoned off funds that should have been spent on beefing-up the region's defences.

"Vladimir Bazarov, acting deputy governor of the Kursk region, was detained," his boss, Alexander Khinstein, wrote on Telegram, adding that "previous achievements cannot and will not serve as a licence to break the law".

Bazarov was previously deputy governor of the neighbouring Belgorod region, where Ukraine has also mounted several attempted cross-border incursions but has never managed to gain a foothold.

The investigation "is in connection" with Bazarov's role there, Khinstein said, adding: "Preliminarily, the case concerns the construction of defensive fortifications."

Citing an unnamed law enforcement source, Russia's TASS state news agency reported that Bazarov is being investigated for embezzling one billion rubles ($12 million).

Ukrainian troops captured dozens of settlements in a shock attack on the Kursk region in August last year, the first major armed incursion by a foreign army into Russian territory since World War Two.

Russia expelled the Ukrainian presence earlier this year with the help of thousands of troops sent by its ally North Korea.

The Kursk governor at the time of the Ukrainian incursion, Alexei Smirnov, was later arrested and is currently awaiting trial for the misuse of army funds.

Another former governor -- Roman Starovoyt, who led the region for five years until a few months before the Ukrainian breakthrough -- killed himself in July after being dismissed from his post as national transport minister amid speculation he was also set to be arrested on corruption charges.